


of dead leeches and repressed feelings

by thunderbirdyy



Category: The Arcana (Visual Novel)
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Smut, Love Confessions, Pre-Canon, Riding, Sort Of, before the plot of the game
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-08
Updated: 2020-04-08
Packaged: 2021-03-02 03:13:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23538169
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thunderbirdyy/pseuds/thunderbirdyy
Summary: This isn’t the first time he’s looked at her like this, like she herself hung the stars, like a doctor should NOT be looking at his apprentice. There are people who spend their whole lives wanting to be looked at this way.
Relationships: Apprentice/Julian Devorak, Julian Devorak/Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 2
Kudos: 99





	of dead leeches and repressed feelings

**Author's Note:**

> i'm coping with the pandemic by writing about another pandemic what can i say

The best time to venture out to Vesuvia’s South End is early in the morning, as the sun is just beginning to crest the deteriorating rooftops of the modest homes that line the streets. Tinged with gold, it almost looks like a different place entirely. 

Clover catches one of the vendors she’s come to know well over the course of her morning commutes setting up shop in the spot he’s occupied for what she can only assume has been quite a while. There’s enough coin in the pocket of her apron to procure a couple of apples that she wraps in one of her scarves and tucks into her satchel. 

“An apple a day keeps the doctor away,” she trills to no one in particular as she continues the familiar path to the clinic. “Or at least keeps him  _ awake. _ ”

By the time she turns the key in the tarnished lock, people have started to meander out of their houses. Tilde seems to be making her rounds early. There is, apparently, some merit in leechmongering, which Clover had come to learn after watching Julian pass off a chunk of change for a single parasite in a glass bottle that once held spices. 

She’s also learned how easy it is to profit on panic. Almost overnight, a snake oil market has grown in the South End with merchants selling their miracle cures for the Red Plague. The most peculiar to date has been a concoction that she’s fairly certain was just bottled piss. 

Great, now she’s thinking about bottled piss. 

She shakes her head and pushes the door open. It squeals on its hinges that desperately cry out for oil, but it does little to wake the slumped figure in the corner of the room. After closing the door behind her just as loudly, Clover wanders to where Julian rests with his head on his arm, squashing the left side of his face into something stupid. 

“Jules,” she whispers, putting a firm hand on his shoulder. “Jules, it’s time to get up.” 

His snoring stutters to a halt, and he cracks one grey eye. 

“Did the plague take me in my sleep?” he rasps. “Because I’m seeing angels.”

The flirtation is ruined by the loud crack of his back that causes Clover to grimace when he sits up.    


“Gross,” she snorts, then tosses him one of the apples from her bag. “You need to start sleeping in a  _ bed  _ for once.” 

“Dedication, my dear.” He catches it and takes a less-than-charming bite. “No time to sleep when you’re saving the world.” 

Clover takes a seat on one of the rickety wooden chairs that groans beneath her weight and lightly drums her fingers on the waxy red-and-green skin of her own apple, free of any bumps or spots. There’s nothing like impeccable timing to guarantee fresh fruit. 

“First off, stop talking with your mouth full. Secondly, we’re only saving  _ Vesuvia,  _ remember?” She takes a bite. “Don’t be so eager to run yourself into the ground.” 

“That’s quite a lot of orders from an apprentice,” he quips, arching a thick brow. 

“My apologies,  _ Doctor. _ ”

The way his cheeks flush at her inflection makes her smile. He could do with a bit more color in his face, she thinks. Banter aside, he’s taken on the appearance of the walking dead. Save for the bruise-colored bags beneath his tired eyes, he’s paler than usual, and though he’s always been rather slender, he’s bordering on gaunt. 

“I just think someone so adamant on the wellbeing of others ought to take care of himself, too.” She crosses her arms and leans back in her chair. “I’d hate to think the good doctor is a hypocrite.” 

“It’s--” he starts, setting the half-eaten apple down to begin pacing. 

Clover fixes him with a look that she knows comes off softer than she’d intended, and he picks the apple back up to take another mouthful. 

“It’s hard to walk away,” he says once he swallows. “I feel like--like I’m just, wasting time. If I’m not working, it feels like I’m just letting people--There are people dying, while I eat or sleep.” 

“Jules, you can’t make curing an entire plague  _ your  _ responsibility.” It scares her, how eager he is to pick up the weight of the world, especially when he doesn’t look nearly strong enough to hold it.

“I’m a doctor. I’m supposed to cure people.” He takes another bite of the apple and wrinkles his nose when his teeth scrape the core. “They’re depending on me. I can’t--I can’t fail, because if I fail, people die.”

She stands with a sigh and takes the apple from his hand. It’s shaking.  _ Both  _ his hands are shaking. They’re cold when she takes them, but it’s nothing a simple spell won’t fix in seconds. 

“Julian,” she says firmly and squeezes his fingers, “you’re trying. We’re both trying,  _ together.  _ There’s an entire district of people that want to make some quick change on people’s fears. You aren’t one of them. What we’re doing here is  _ good.  _ You’re doing  _ good. _ ”

He nods. She can see his jaw tensing and relaxing as she speaks, until finally some of the tension dissipates from his broad shoulders. The smile he gives her afterward is small, and doesn’t reach his eyes, but she’s delighted to see it nonetheless. 

“What would I do without you?” he asks with far too much warmth. 

The space between them quickly becomes the eye of a storm. It crackles with an energy not unlike magic, and she’s frozen with his hands in hers. This isn’t the first time he’s looked at her like this, like she herself hung the stars, like a doctor should  _ not  _ be looking at his apprentice. There are people who spend their whole lives wanting to be looked at this way. 

Maybe that’s why pulling away feels so bad. 

“Starve, probably,” she finally says, shoving her hands into her apron pockets and turning on her heel. 

The clinking of jars and bottles sounds distant as she rifles through them, drowned out by the sound of the frantic heartbeat she’s attempting to calm. She isn’t really sure what she’s looking for; all the labels look like gibberish now. Behind her, his stare is burning, boring holes into her back. 

Her unsteady fingers find the spice bottle she recognizes from earlier in the week. She picks it up and shakes it, absently looking at the leech inside as it’s battered against the glass with sloshing liquid. 

“I think it’s dead,” she mumbles, then sets it back down. “What a waste of money. Someone really needs to tell Tilde--” 

“Clover.” 

She freezes midway through pushing the stray hair out of her face. The ticking of the clock that hangs on the wall fills the time it takes for her to turn around. 

“What?”

Julian’s long legs cover the distance between them in seconds when he crosses the room, and the remaining space disappears as his hands grip Clover’s waist to pull her flush against his body and into a kiss. Whatever restraint she’s been trying to fool herself into thinking she has vanishes, as does whatever control Julian may have been trying to exert. 

The second her hands find his hair, he melts into her, and she swallows down the groan that rumbles past his chapped, concentration-bitten lips. Almost frantically, he walks her to the desk, the lip of it digging into her lower back. Something shatters. 

“Shit,” she breathes, turning her head to look for what fell. Julian takes the opportunity to place kisses along the fair skin of her neck. “Jules, I think your dead leech just got even more dead.” 

Julian’s laugh is contagious. He barks out the ugliest sound she’s ever heard, and she decides, as he presses their foreheads together, that she’ll do anything to save that sound and the grin that comes with it. 

“Poor bastard,” he breathes, then kisses her again, but when he tries to hook his hands under her thighs to lift her, she stops him. 

“Bed,” she says between kisses, her fingers wrapped around his bony wrists. “If you won’t sleep in a bed, you’re at least going to get fucked in one.” 

His bed is exactly what she expects. It’s unmade, with threadbare blankets clumped into a ball at the end. The pillow has already found its way to the floor, and when Julian’s back hits the mattress, the springs creak beneath him. His long limbs hang over the edges of the twin frame, and he bumps his head on the chipped headboard. 

Clover climbs over him with a knee on either side of his narrow hips, her skirts rucked up over her thighs.“I might see why you prefer your desk.” 

He manages an almost-whispered “yeah” in response. His attention is mostly fixed on the air hitting the newly exposed skin of his chest and her lips closing around a nipple. 

His hips lift from the mattress instinctively, and the friction catches her by surprise. Apparently, her own arousal had snuck up on her, because the pressure against her sex through her damp underwear makes her shudder. 

Asra had always called her patient.  _ “Maybe that’s why the earth speaks to you as it does,”  _ he’d said. She’s steady, wise, an old soul. 

Perhaps on another day, she would have been. She would have run her tongue along the divot between each of his ribs, kissed her way down the trail of coarse auburn hair that disappears beneath his waistband, and kept him balancing on a razor-thin edge. 

Now, though, she can hardly think past the raw desire burning white hot in the pit of her stomach that makes her cunt throb almost painfully. If anything, she’s been patient far too long, perching on the edge of his desk and watching the tendons in his hands flex as he works, committing those slender fingers to memory in case she ever got a moment alone in the shop. She caught herself eyeing his broad shoulders when his back was turned more than she’d like to admit, her legs draped over them in daydreams. 

But those are ideas for another time. Currently, she doesn’t have the wherewithal to dither away time with teasing. She discards her panties from beneath her skirts, then unlaces Julian’s trousers just enough to free his straining cock. He whimpers in relief that quickly becomes desperation when she lowers herself just enough to grind against him, coating him in her slick. 

“ _ Clover,”  _ he pleads when the head of his cock briefly catches on her entrance. 

She doesn’t take much convincing. The sound he makes as she seats herself on his cock makes her clench around him. 

“Good?” she asks. 

“Peachy. You?”

Instead of answering, she moves her hips, slowly lifting off his cock and lowering herself back down. Julian throws his head back, and she can’t resist leaning over to suck a bruise into the pale skin of his neck. 

“Teeth,” he pants, his hands coming to rest on her hips, “Use more teeth.” 

Heeding his request, she bites into the junction of his neck and shoulder. Immediately, he hisses his pleasure, bucking up into her sharply. 

“A doctor who likes pain?” Clover asks, leaving another bite not far from the other. 

“Would you prefer the alternative? A-- _ nnn _ \--A doctor who likes to inflict pain?”

“A valid point.” 

Clover sits back up, and this time, Julian follows, holding him to her while she writhes in his lap. He tugs down the top of her dress, exposing her breasts to him, then takes one of her hardened nipples between his fingers. In response, her nails dig into his shoulders. 

“Have you thought about this before?” she asks, breathless. 

The redness in his face tells her all she needs to know. “Yes.” He swallows thickly. “So--so many times.” 

“I’ve thought about it, too.” She buries her face in the crook of his neck, taking the lobe of his ear between her teeth. “I’d think about you bending me over one of the tables in the clinic. Or maybe you’d like to be the one bent over? Do you want me to fuck you like that, Julian?” 

“Want you to--to fuck me however you want,” he keens, then drops his hand from her breast to beneath her skirts to start circling her clit. He won’t last long if she keeps going like this. 

“ _ Shit,  _ Julian.” Clover’s movements become a steady grind to keep his cock rubbing against the spot inside her that makes electricity shoot down her spine. It’s hardly graceful; They’re fucking like a couple of teenagers afraid of getting caught, and it occurs to Clover, somewhere in the back of her mind, that they just might. She definitely didn’t lock the clinic door behind her. 

The whole situation is rushed and messy. It’s the perfect chaos that is so undeniably Julian. He’s always been the earthquake to shake the solid ground, or the stray bolt of lightning that splits the steadiest tree in the forest and sends it up in flames. This couldn’t have gone any other way. She doesn’t want it to. 

“Gonna come,” he stammers, to which she replies by locking her legs to hold him in place. 

“Go ahead, Jules.” She pushes the sweat-damp copper hair from his forehead and kisses him. “I want to see you.” 

His body tenses, and with a choked whimper, he erratically thrusts up into her just as her walls clench around his cock. She comes with a soundless shout, clinging hard to his shoulders as her hips jerk against him. 

It takes a few moments for them both to get their bearings, but when they do, Clover lifts herself from Julian’s lap and sits at the edge of the bed. “That was--”

“Long overdue.” He finishes relacing his trousers and gives her a smirk.

“I was going to say unprofessional.” She pulls the top of her dress back up and slides her arms back into the sleeves. “But in all honesty, you’re right.” 

“I guess this makes you a teacher’s pet, doesn’t it?” 

Julian’s teasing is met with a pillow to the face. “If I remember correctly, I recall you saying  _ quite  _ the opposite. Don’t lie.”

He flushes to the tips of his ears, but still manages a smile. “Yes, Ma’am.”


End file.
